


The Story of Damon

by Blueseelie



Series: Liera's Children [2]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Backstory, Blood and Gore, Brutal Murder, Cain and Abel, Gen, Warlock - Freeform, dnd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:28:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28195452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blueseelie/pseuds/Blueseelie
Summary: Damon, a half-orc child, finds himself making a warlock pact with Liera, the Goddess of Lies. This character was made for a DND campaign that never got played but took place in a setting where the continent had been taken over by BBEG who was released at the end of our last campaign, allowing him to create a totalitarian empire dependent on slave labour. Damon is one of the many unfortunate souls who has only ever known life under the Empire.For context, this takes place several centuries after the stories of Anon, Kieran, and Nox, my other DND characters. The only character still alive from the original campaign is Trym who has been trapped in the Faerie realm since before the BBEG was released. Also, Damon is around 10 years old. Anon was 12 when he became Liera's follower and 14-15 when he died
Series: Liera's Children [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2065512





	1. Into the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Content warnings: Slavery, violence, gore, child abuse, and child slavery

“Get ready ladies and gents, next one’s up. This one’s no stranger to the ring, so place your bets now! Here he comes, Damon the Untamed!” 

The spear cut into his ribs and he could feel his body moving, dragging his chains with him across the warm sandy dirt. He stepped out into the dusty ring. The gate behind him clanged shut as the collar and chains dematerialized with a burst of red sparks, making him flinch as the flashes burned his neck. He stared blankly at the faces cheering at him through the iron bars.

Damon tilted his head up to get a look at his audience. He could see the slave drivers, the guards, and the masters all crowded together in their excitement. They were all loyal servants of the empire, but there were certain rules that could be broken for the ones in charge, rules like gambling or using the empire’s slaves for unsanctioned fighting. They found a great deal of sick entertainment in seeing young children like Damon tear each other to shreds. Damon had never tried to fight when they dragged him away from his work in the mines, always having understood its futility. 

So far this had been the longest stint he’d spent in the pits. He figured his masters wanted to make their money while he was still strong enough to fight for them. They would leave him in one of the mine shafts when his bleeding wouldn’t stop or his gashes were too deep, probably underneath a pile of rocks to stage a cave-in and let him either die there or recover on his own. This would probably be his last fight for a while, ending his tour around the labor camp’s fighting pits for the moment.

“We’ve seen him tear apart goblins and wild boars aplenty, but today let’s throw something new at this rare beast. Let’s see how this wicked little half-orc handles a full-grown, raging orc!” The crowd screamed, the clattering of coins exchanging hands and the placing of bets barely audible.

Damon’s eyes fixed on the sand below him, his knees buckling. 

He was going to die 

They were finally finished with him. He heard the clanging of the other gate opening across from him but he couldn’t look up. The rattle of heavy chains being given slack, the casting of a spell from above sending the orc into a magic fueled rage. Damon couldn’t move, transfixed on the not yet dry spots of blood in the sand, creating patterns on the ground. The orc’s chains dragged in the sand as he was prodded with spears through the bars towards Damon. 

A spear came out from behind him, piercing his thick skin and sending him stumbling forward. He finally looked up to see the grey mass of the orc, whose skin was a grid of thick scars. His tusks were yellowed and filed to points. The orc finally fixed his gaze on Damon.

He was going to die.

The orc charged.

And the world went black. 

\--

It was an all-encompassing solid kind of darkness, something he couldn’t move through without feeling like something would reach out from the black and grab his ankle. Damon was still frozen, unable to find a point in the nothingness to ground himself in. He had forgotten where he had been just before and he didn’t understand why he felt so scared.

Without having to move, his eyes suddenly focused on an outline in front of him. Slowly a young tiefling boy, maybe a couple of years younger than Damon, materialized until he was hazily visible against the black.

The boy’s head was half-cocked, his blank white eyes staring directly at Damon. He smiled savagely, his eyes unmoving, showing a row of white filed teeth. He wore white robes like a cleric’s but drenched in wet blood. He noticed after a second, the deep cut across the boy’s throat that was slowly oozing thick red blood, staining his pale white skin.

The bloody boy took a step towards Damon, still smiling. Panicked, Damon backed away, tripping on something unseen in the darkness behind him and falling.

“Now, now, Anon. Don’t frighten the child.” The soft voice of a woman came from behind him. Despite his instincts, Damon turned away from the tiefling and towards the voice behind him. A woman knelt behind him, with dark skin and hair that barely stood out against the black surrounding them making it hard to focus on her figure or any distinct features. Standing out against the dark was a simply carved smiling white mask which Damon’s eyes were drawn to.

“I’ve come for you, my son. To save you from that place.”

Damon was speechless, unable to look away from her masked face.

“You’ve been through so much pain. Would you like it to stop?” She reached out to cup Damon’s face in her hands. “I can offer you a happy life. I can offer you a family. I can offer you safety. Would you like that?”

Something within him made him start crying, his eyes still wide and transfixed on her.

“Oh, my son.” The woman brought Damon toward her chest, breaking his gaze and resting his head on her shadowy bosom. 

“You can be mine and you can have an elder brother to protect you forever…” Damon began nodding his head violently on her chest, letting go completely and crying into her thick impossibly soft hair.

“Then it is done. Are you ready to go back now, my son?” Damon shook his head crying harder at the thought of leaving her warm embrace.

“Now, now, my son. We’ll be with you, you have nothing to fear anymore.”

\--

The world suddenly turned cold as Damon was alone again in the darkness. He turned around and the white tiefling boy was gone as well. Damon looked down and he couldn’t even see his hands. He tried to move them closer to his face but he couldn’t. He realized he couldn’t even feel his hands or his feet. He was paralyzed in the darkness. He tried to cry out but he couldn’t hear anything come out. He silently screamed for what felt like hours. Eventually, he stopped trying to move and let himself fall into the dark.


	2. Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: child abuse

At some point, he began to feel his fingers and toes again. He tried to move them even though he couldn’t see. Feeling moved across his body as he began to twitch and squirm regaining control of his limbs. After a while, he realized he could open his eyes. It was dark when he opened them, nothing near the darkness he had been in before, but the dark of night, dimly lit by lanterns in the street in front of him. He was lying in an alley just off of what looked like the main road. He very slowly sat up, leaning against the wall and stretching his arms out to touch the cold wet stone.

It all suddenly came back to him. He had been in the pit, under the hot sun, about to die. But where was he now? His head pounded with pain when he tried to think about it. He stopped trying to recall anything. He just focused on the fact that he wasn’t in chains and he wasn’t in the hot sandy mines. An entire day seemed to have passed between then and now.

He raised his hands to his face as he began to shake from being so scared and disoriented, only to notice the thick blood covering his hands and arms when he touched his face. He frantically searched his body for wounds, finding nothing big enough to bleed this much blood. The blood on his hands wasn’t his. But his head was pounding as if he had been hit hard. 

He reached his bloody hands up to his head only to pull away quickly at the feeling of small horns, tiny bumps coming up out of his forehead. 

Damon stood up crying and staggered deeper into the alleyway. Confused and dazed, he randomly walked the intersecting maze of side streets with his arms wrapped around himself until he could see the beginning of a field of tall grass. He had never seen them before, but he had been told that the town above the mines was surrounded by farmland as it was charged with producing a large amount of grain for the empire. He stumbled out of the darkness of the alley making his way towards the cover of the grass when he heard a shout.

“I see him, there’s the fucking runt!” A large posse of men turned a corner to shine their lanterns onto the Damon frozen in the middle of the road. He made an instinctual dash for the tall grass as the men ran at him and reached its cover before they could grab him. Damon frantically pushed his way through the tall grass until he stumbled and fell to the ground.

He was too tired to keep running. His body and head were pounding and an old wound in his back had opened up again and he was bleeding slowly. Maybe if they found him unconscious they would decide not to kill him there on the spot. They might just beat him within an inch of his life and drag him back to the mines.

 _But you don’t want that…_ A voice not much louder than the whistling of the wind overhead said.

Damon pulled his face away from the dirt where he had been crying and saw the ghostly figure of the tiefling boy partially obscured by the grass. It looked as if the grass was growing right through him as if he wasn’t really there.

 _She doesn’t want you to be here… She needs you to be somewhere else…_ the boy spoke through his pointed teeth without breaking that gruesome smile. Damon’s hope and fascination had overpowered his fear of the situation. He had never seen magic before living in the mines but this eerie figure had to be some type of enchantment or spell.

 _Would you like some help… my little brother?_ Somehow his smile got wider.

“How could you help me, can you do magic?” Damon whispered excitedly. The voices of the men chasing him were getting louder as they pushed through the grass towards him.

 _No… not magic… an even greater power… Would you like my help?_ The sounds of his voice didn’t seem like it was coming from the figure but from inside of Damon’s head.

“I don’t want to go back there. Y-yes please help me.” 

_Of course…_ Damon felt a rush of joy at the idea of never having to go back to the mines or the pit or any of the masters. But his stomach dropped again when the figure disappeared and his vision started to get fuzzy. He felt the feeling leaving his extremities again and he was completely frozen, this time not out of fear but from something else he had no control over. As his vision went completely dark, the fear came back in full force. And then Damon was in the darkness again.

\--

This time, Damon woke in a forest. The light was bright but the chill in the air told him it was morning. He was sitting with his back against a tree. As the feeling came back to his body, Damon was afraid to look down at his hands. Staring up at the canopy above, Damon began to taste something metallic and he suddenly felt sick. He bent over a root next to him and lurched, his stomach emptying on the mossy floor. He opened his eyes and saw a pool of vomit. The bile was dyed red. The taste in his mouth was blood, someone else's blood. Damon slowly looked at his hands and followed the veneer of blood up to his shoulders. His shirt was soaked. Damon slowly leaned back against the tree.

 _That was very very fun… Thank you for allowing me, brother…_ The boy’s figure slowly materialized in front of him, sitting cross-legged in the dirt. His form looked more solid and the voice was a bit louder than before.

 _I appreciate you allowing me to do that… for allowing me to help you…_ Damon saw the boy’s thin white tail swaying back and forth behind him. 

Whatever the boy had done, it meant that Damon was never going back to that awful place. He was never going to have to fight again and for that he was thankful.

“Thank you,” Damon said hesitantly “For your help.”

There was a long pause before anyone spoke.

“May I ask you a question?” 

_Of course, brother…_

“Why do you keep calling me brother.”

The boy tilted his head to one side in what Damon took to be confusion because his mouth never changed from that smile. _Because we are brothers… our Mother said so… I am your elder and I must protect you… you are my younger and you must help me…_

“But… I don’t have a mother” Damon said cautiously. The boy’s laugh sounded wrong, like some blowing sharply on a broken flute, hollow and raspy.

_Yes, you do brother… Our mother… Our Goddess… She promised to protect you and you promised that you were her’s, did you not?_

“Our mother is the woman from that dark place, with the very soft hair?” The boy laughed again.

Yes, brother… You met us both there… She does have beautiful hair…

Damon remembered the horns on his head and touched them. They were incredibly sore but Damon was too curious to stop touching them.

“Did she give me these horns?” Damon asked.

_Yes… She needed to change you… to mark you shell… she does this for all her children…_

“What is her name, she never told me. And what is your name… brother?” Damon's fear was ebbing, the dry blood on his skin causing him less and less concern.

 _Our mother has no true name… nor does she have a true form… many call her Liera… some call her Lies… we will call her mother… and you will call me brother… do you understand, brother…_ Damon realized that the boy was sitting much closer to him than he had been before.

“Yes… yes I think I do. Thank you. For telling me this and for helping me before.” Damon gave the boy a smile, one much more friendly than the one that was plastered on the boy’s face.

 _Of course brother… Now that I’ve helped you and we have been made brothers… I must ask for your help brother…_ The boy was now sitting directly in front of Damon.

But Damon no longer felt any fear towards this boy, his brother. His brother was here to help him, sent by a mother which he now had. Damon didn’t feel that gnawing feeling of hopelessness he had always had. There were people here who would protect him and keep him safe. He had a family, a real family, a good family. Damon couldn’t hold back a genuine smile that made him feel warm inside.

“Of course brother!”


	3. Lodging for the Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: Violence and gore

His brother had led him through the forest to the outskirts of a town. A cottage surrounded by a low stone fence lay at the edge of the woods.

 _Go into that house…_ his brother was no longer touching the ground but hanging in the air next to him looking ahead.

“Isn’t that somebody else's house though, brother? We can’t just walk in.” Damon had lived his whole life as a slave but that didn’t mean he had no concept of what the rest of the world was like. He knew that other people had homes and families and food.

 _That house belongs to our mother… It all does… Do not worry brother…_ His brother began to pull forwards over the fence.

Convinced by his older brother, Damon quickly hopped the fence and followed him through the unlocked back door. They walked into the one-room cottage to find a small family sitting down to dinner, two small children sat down with their parents. Damon’s stomach began to hurt as he remembered how hungry he was.

 _Now kill them, brother… Then you may eat…_ the brother floated unseen next to one of the children as their family turned to look at Damon.

“What?! I can’t hurt them! Why would I hurt them, brother?” Damon looked panicked as the father got up from his seat.

“Who the fuck do you think you are, walking into my home! You’ll leave this moment, you urchin, or you’ll regret it! I swear I’ll beat you…” The man's voice started to sound muffled as Brother began to speak.

 _You need to eat… Would you like some help, brother…_ his blank eyes were fixed on Damon.

“I'm hungry but I don’t want to hurt them…”

 _It sounds like you want my help… You want to eat…_ Damon’s fingers started to numb.

“I don’t want to hurt them! Please don’t hurt them!” Damon was able to say before he lost feeling in his tongue. The last thing he saw before he fell back into the dark was the man reaching for a long iron stick near the fireplace and shouting something he couldn’t hear.

\--

Damon woke up sitting at the table, a full plate of food in front of him. He knew what he would see on the floor if he looked down so he focused on the food in front of him. His stomach moaned and Damon weakly picked up a fork and began to eat the cold food. All he could taste was the metallic taste of blood in his mouth but he forced himself to swallow. As he ate, tears splashed onto the table cloth and his plate, his eyes never moving from his plate. When he finished, he finally lifted his gaze to see his brother sitting across from him with his elbows on the table staring up at him. Through his translucent figure, Damon could see the still bodies of the family. The mother’s body was on the floor in the corner of the room, hugging the two children close to her. While her body was hunched over them, her neck hung backward at an odd angle, her throat savagely torn open revealing bone. She was still bleeding, staining her apron and her children red.

Damon focused back on his brother, silently crying.

“Why did you do that, brother? I asked you not to hurt them.” His brother would not stop smiling and he was beginning to scare him again. 

_I know… But you said you were hungry… I needed to help you so that you will continue to help me, brother…_

“How can you do that, hurt people? And how can you use my body to do it? You said you didn’t have magic! You lied to me!” Damon was still sitting with his hand at his sides only now the tears were streaming down his cheeks and his nose was starting to run, mixing with the blood on his face.

_I did not lie… I would never lie… I have no magic… nor do I have a body… in order to help I must use yours… our mother has allowed me to do this using her power… Don’t cry, brother…_

His brother was suddenly sat next to Damon on the bench, staring up at him. Compared to Damon, he was much shorter. But Damon also had the advantage of being half-orc, giving him more height and strength than any other boy would have at 8 years of age. But somehow his brother was able to cause such devastation where Damon couldn’t. It scared him a little. Sitting there his crying began to stop. They sat next to each other in silence as Damon wiped his face and nose with the table cloth.

 _Brother, there is a basin in the kitchen and clothing upstairs… You are very messy… You should go clean yourself_. Damon nodded and got up.

There was in fact a large basin filled with water for bathing that had been left in the kitchen by the stove. The water was cold now but Damon had never had a warm bath in his life anyway. He scrubbed the blood from his tough skin and washed any open cuts on his body. When he got out he found a bar of soap and began to furiously scrub at his teeth and his two small tusks with a cloth until he could only taste the soap and he was sure the blood was gone.

His brother had disappeared while he had bathed but reappeared to lead him to a trunk of clothes in the room upstairs.

_You must look your best… Mother insists we always look respectable… like good sons…_

Damon picked from the children's clothes, a boy’s white shirt and black shorts. He had seen the masters wear clothing like this when the officials came to visit the mines. He couldn’t find a necktie, but he did find a shiny black ribbon which he tied around his neck. His spirits had lifted after bathing and he had decided to forgive his brother again. He spun around to show his brother what he had picked out.

_Very nice, brother… Mother is pleased…_

There was a hay mattress in the upstairs room but when Damon lay down, he sank right into it. The feeling was too strange so he got up and laid down on the wooden floor. With a full stomach and the knowledge that his brother would be watching out for him while he slept, Damon passed out from exhaustion.


	4. Dreams

He found himself in the dark place again. He looked around for his mother, the dark woman with the soft hair and he saw her sitting behind him. He ran to her and put his arms around her, falling into the soft curls which fell down to her feet. After a moment he pulled away.

“Hello, Mother!” Damon smiled up at her unchanging mask.

“Hello, my son.” She cupped his face in her hands again and Damon closed his eyes, relishing the feeling of his mother’s affection and her soft skin.

She pulled her hand away and rested them in her lap and Damon took that as a cue to step back.

“My son, you are mine and you belong to me.” Damon nodded obediently as he was used to doing but this time there was conviction behind his actions.

“Your brother is also mine. His voice belongs to me as well and you will listen to what he says.” Damon nodded again, bobbing his head enthusiastically. Her tone, while friendly and loving, made him believe that he shouldn’t speak or ask any questions just now.

“You are powerless but I will grant you power.” At that, Damon couldn’t hold back his excitement.

“Will I get magic?!” He bounced up and down smiling giddily.

“Yes, my son. When your brother is unable to help you, you will need to help yourself in order to carry out my wishes.” She stood up slowly, her hair falling down around her to rest on the ground. A hand reached out and when it opened, there was a small black book resting in it.  
Damon took it and clutched it close to him. He could feel the book buzzing with electricity, vibrating his chest. He beamed up at her.

“Thank you, mother! Thank you for protecting me and for giving me a brother and for being my mother and for giving me a family! And for giving me magic!”

“I gift you with the tools you need to serve me.” Despite the coldness of her words, her voice was so calm and soft that Damon didn’t even notice, he just kept smiling and holding his book.

“Mother, may I ask a question please?” Damon shifted from foot to foot. “Why does my brother hurt people? I don’t like to hurt people but he keeps killing them. Does he have to do that?”  
Liera sat down again and reached her arms out for him. Damon came and sat in her lap cradled by her arms and cushioned by her hair.

“My son, the people who have hurt you must die. The people who have wronged you must die. The people who stand in the way of your work must die. But don’t be afraid for they are all just shells. Just as your body is a shell, everyone you meet is but a hollow mask. They are simply lying to themselves that they matter. You and your brother serve me, so you have a purpose, whereas they have nothing.” She began to pet his close-cropped hair. “You must go back now,” and the feeling of her hand on his head began to fade.

\--

Damon woke up with tears in his eyes. He cautiously looked down at his hands but they were clean. He rolled over and onto something small and hard on the floor. Reaching behind him, he touched the small black book from last night. 

He sat up straight, holding the book tightly in his hands. Damon had never learned to read but when he opened the book he somehow understood exactly what was written. 

They were spells. Magic.

He eagerly leafed through the pages, seeing the incantations as if they were words he’d always know.

One spell stood as being one that Damon couldn’t understand as well as the rest. It appeared as normal writing did to him, random scratches of ink on the page. He did get some sense of what the words were meant to mean though. Resurrection.

Damon giddily slid the small book into his pants and walked downstairs

Upon seeing the bodies of the murdered family, he frantically thought about what Mother had said that night. But he still ended up throwing up into the fireplace.  
His brother was sitting at the table among the uncleared plates with his head turned and fixed on the front door.

 _Good morning brother… I hope you slept well… We should leave this place…_ He turned his head slowly to face Damon.

Damon nodded and went to rummage through the pantry for his breakfast.

“I saw Mother last night. She gave me magic,” he said cheerily as he cut a thick slice of bread from a loaf that had gone stale after being left out all night. “She said to listen to my big brother. So where are we going today, brother?”

_We need to keep traveling… And secure another location to sleep tonight…_

Damon froze.

“Brother… I don’t want to hurt anybody else. Please.” Damon stared at the kitchen counter.

 _I will only help if you ask me to… Mother has given you a power of your own, yes? Brother’s body floated up from the table and across the ceiling lazily, towards a front window of the house to look out at the street. As long as you can protect yourself… I won’t have to help you… but if you can’t do this… I will need to step in…_ Damon could see figures walking past the window, ignorant of the slaughter inside.

“Okay. I can do that. I have mother’s magic now too!” Damon turned to look at his brother who was watching the passersby intensely, almost hungrily though it was hard to tell with his blank eyes and fixed smile.

His brother turned to face Damon. _Understand, brother… we only want to keep you safe… We need you, brother…_  
Damon felt that odd sense of happiness again in spite of his fear. 

He nodded, “I understand.”  
He picked up his chunk of bread and took a large bite. Mouth full, he smiled.

“Lead the way, brother!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Essentially, Damon is being protected/haunted, by Anon Praise's ghost. Liera was able to preserve his spirit when he died centuries ago and has bound her favorite "son" to a new body, Damon, allowing him to interact with the world again to some degree. Taking in a new child is how she hopes to resurrect Anon, who was one of the most ruthless and effective followers she's had. Damon wasn't the best candidate because of his kindness and innocence, but the incorporeal BBEG of this current empire has been chipping away at the powers of the gods and similarly powerful beings so Liera's options were limited. Her hope is that bringing back Anon will help her regain some power in this world.
> 
> Kind of sad that I'll probably never get to play this character...


End file.
